The Small Animal Core: Models of Acute Lung Injury (ALI) will provide two major core functions to support the PPG's research investigators and five research projects. The first function is providing murine models of ALI (LPS- and vertilator-induced) with the core ensuring reproducible studies with a complete range of expertise and tools to obtain critical information pertaining to the cellular and molecular basis of endothelial barrier permeability. The Core, using well published techniques and parameters of acute lung injury, will employ state-of-the-art evaluation of pulmonary pathophysiology, interventions, data analysis, and interpretation, in order to provide insight into the efficacy and mechanisms of clinically relevant management approaches and to facilitate the translation of basic research to the clinical arena. The Core will take advantage of the resources available at the University of Chicago Small Animal Imaging core (which includes MRI, CT Optical Imaging, etc. This Core provides quantitative measurements of permeability, inflammation, edema, vascular leak and biomarkers. A second core function is to care for the wild type and geneticallyengineered mice utilized in this Program and to generate novel transgenic mice where indicated. Core leaders have assembled talented and well published personnel and enjoy newly built laboratory facilities to satisfy a wide range of experimental physiological and imaging needs. Core C personnel have professional experience spanning the fields of physiology, microsurgery, biology, and animal care and has already provided convincing evidence of coherent interactions with investigators of all five research projects delivering key preliminary results related to our PPG projects.